Retail stores often utilize signage to convey information regarding products offered for sale, e.g., product cost, unit cost, sale pricing, etc. Such signage must be updated and/or replaced on a periodic basis. For example, regular product pricing may change, or during a sale, a discounted price may be necessary. Changes to signage may be required for hundreds or even thousands of products and these changes may be required daily, weekly or another periodic term. In some states, it is critical that the signage be updated in a timely fashion as the retail store may be obligated to honor the price displayed adjacent the product. In other words, if the store fails to remove signage that displays a discounted cost, the store must charge that cost if a customer relies upon that price when making a purchase selection. In view of the foregoing, it should be apparent that proper timing and placement of signage is a critical responsibility of a retail store.
Although some retail chain stores share common store layouts, also known as a store planogram, most retail locations, even within a chain store, have unique store planograms. The changeover of signage can incur significant time which in turn incurs significant cost. A common practice is to print sheets of signage and an employee or group of employees are tasked with signage changeover. These methods include various deficiencies, e.g., sheets printed out of order or not matched to the store planogram, sheets that require further separation of individual signage labels, etc.
In view of the foregoing issues, some stores require signage to be in a per store planogram order and to be pre-separated, both to facilitate the efficient changeover of signage. It has been found that to achieve this arrangement of signage, signage labels or cards are imposed so that each set of labels is in sequential order within a sheet and then across the collection of sheets. For example, cards may be delivered to various stores in stacks of ninety-six cards each stack thereby requiring three sheets, each sheet containing thirty-two labels, to be collated sequentially to produce a complete stack. Cards of this type may be cut using a high speed cutting system. The cards may be fed from a slitter system into bins, however it has been found that these systems are ineffective as the cards are not guided and adjacent cards interfere with each other as they bounce and settle into the bins. Such systems cause a high percentage of media jams and thus result is downtime and increased costs. Moreover, these systems are dependent on operator actions which are less predictable than an automated system. Examples of other signage production and signage cutting/collating systems are described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/523,963, filed on Oct. 27, 2014 and titled TAPED MEDIA IMPOSITION FOR ADHESIVE IN-STORE SIGNAGE, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/524,018, filed on Oct. 27, 2014 and titled VARIABLE GUIDE SYSTEM FOR SHINGLING IN-STORE ADHESIVE SIGNAGE, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/582,426, filed on Dec. 24, 2014 and titled MULTI-STAGE COLLATION SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR HIGH SPEED COMPILING OF SEQUENTIALLY ORDERED IN-STORE SIGNAGE, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/594,711, filed on Jan. 12, 2015 and titled COLLATION SYSTEM WITH RETRACTING GUIDES, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/713,553, filed on May 15, 2015 and titled MULTI-STAGE COLLATION SYSTEM WITH RETRACTING GUIDES, the disclosures of which are incorporated by reference herein.
Additionally, some stores require cards of different sizes within a single set of cards, e.g., large and small cards. Moreover, the various sizes may be required in a specific order within the stack, i.e., not in the form of one stack of large cards and one stack of small cards, in order to match a store planogram. Known systems are not arranged to accommodate different or changing sizes within a single stack of cards as collation systems are designed for a single sized card. In some instances, to modify a known system, it must be dismantled and reassembled to accept a card size that is different than a previous card size. Such changeover may be difficult, expensive or impractical.
The present disclosure addresses all these problems in a practical and cost effective method.